The day was very slow and we had plenty of tour guides! On Memorial Day I probably gave more tours myself than we had today for all the guides. Not sure why? The weather was good for tours (cool, slightly overcast, intermittent sprinkles as clouds passed by).
On the one tour that I gave, a visitor had an uncle who flew a TBF Avenger from an Escort Carriers in the Pacific. Typically Escort Carriers operated with Destroyer Escorts (like the USS Slater) in Hunter-Killer Groups. The photo above is a TBF Avenger taking off from the USS Guadalcanal in 1944. The link shows a complete photo sequence of an Avenger attack on a submarine. Several months after that photo sequence was taken, the USS Guadalcanal Hunter-Killer group captured U-505.
While the visitor knew that his uncle flew Anti-submarine missions (he dropped depth charges and sonobuoys), but he wasn't sure of the carrier(s) that he served on. TBF Avengers were produced in great numbers (over 9,000). The plane was a real workhorse in WWII so it's hard to pinpoint a particular ship (or even if it was an Escort Carrier). However, I'm making an assumption that it was an Escort Carrier since most anti-submarine missions were flown from this type of ship. The larger fleet carriers also flew TBF Avengers, but typically in anti-ship torpedo attacks or shore bombing missions. There were several famous aviators who flew TBF Avengers in WWII (George H Bush and Paul Newman).
Monday, June 1, 2009
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